


14.03: Bobo Buffet

by nochickflickpodcast



Series: NCFM Season 14 [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: (No) Chick Flick Moments, Character Analysis, Comedy, Discussion, Episode Analysis, Episode: s14e03 The Scar, Fancast, Gen, Humor, Meta, Podcast, Screenplay/Script Format, transcript
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-19 05:37:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19350574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nochickflickpodcast/pseuds/nochickflickpodcast
Summary: Join us in covering S14E3, "The Scar", or the one where Dean, Sam, and Jody explore a fictitious forest, Jack plays fairy godmother, and Cas makes soup. Tune in for ALL the Wayward Sisters feels.





	14.03: Bobo Buffet

**Author's Note:**

> Complete transcript of (No) Chick Flick Moment's 14.03: Bobo Buffet
> 
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> Come join us!

Remmy: Hello, hello, hello everybody! This is (No) Chick Flick Moments. I am your co-host, Remmy. 

Bea: And I am your other co-host, Bea.

Remmy: And today we are going to be talking about Supernatural season 14 episode 3, “The Scar”. This episode was written by Robert “Bobo” Berens, and directed by Robert “Bob” Singer. 

Bea: So we got a Robert special.

Remmy: We got a Robert special this week, yeah. The description for this episode reads: _Still trying to solve the mystery of what happened to Dean, Sam enlists the help of Sheriff Jody Mills who may unknowingly already be on the case. Castiel continues to be a father figure to Jack, who surprises even himself, when a life is on the line._

Bea: Oohh. So we have a lot of chess pieces on the board today.

Remmy: We have a lot of characters this week.

Bea: And as we get into it, I think we’re even going to be talking about characters who didn’t appear on-screen, because we got a lot of Wayward mentions here. 

Remmy: Oh yeah. I’m gonna have a whole soliloquy on all the Wayward groundwork in this episode, for sure. 

Bea: Mhmm, but starting right off the bat we are back to Dean and Sam, and the initial conversation — we don’t know what the subject is, but Dean is showing a lot of disgust, and as it goes on [we find] it’s all sass he is directing toward Sam’s grief beard.

Remmy: The grief beard banter! “Sam, I can't sleep. I can't eat. It's everywhere I turn. It's just there and it's staring at me.”

Bea: It's such a sibling thing to do. The second that a sibling changes up their look you're like, “No, here's everything that's wrong with it,” even if it's fine. It doesn't matter what your opinion actually is, you're going to tell them why it's terrible.

Remmy: It was a great cold open for “Dean's back, yay!”

Bea: Yes, and really trying to reinforce for us that Dean's back and he's the same guy that he was before.

Remmy: It was really good. And then they're going through the halls, and Dean's ragging on Sam, and Sam's like, “You know, some people like it,” and Dean — 

Bea: Dean goes full fashionista, like, “Nobody likes it.”

Remmy: Yeah, just put it away — oh no, he says, “Duck Dynasty called and they want it _all_ back.” It was so…

Bea: Yeah, and then the hand gesture being like _yourself_. “Sam, package yourself up and direct mail yourself to those guys.”

Remmy: Yes, very overdramatic fashionista. It was great. And then they round the corner and Dean says it's just really good to be back... _home_?

Bea: Yeah, and to have that thought juxtaposed immediately with this swarm of hunters that are populating the war room. He’s like _oh wait_ , this might be home sweet home but it's not the home I knew anymore.

Remmy: Right. He trailed off on that because he just got slapped in the face with all of this bustling activity of the hunter hub. Me, I'm still cheering, “Hunter Hub! Hunter Hub!” but Dean is obviously immediately put on his back foot here.

Bea: Yeah. It's the place where he calls home, and he would have had a memory of it when he left, but in the time that he's been gone things have transformed in this way and he just wasn't there to witness it.

Remmy: I have feelings on this whole Dean [scene].

Bea: Oh yeah! Oh yes.

Remmy: There may or may not have been a fic in the works, but it kind of fizzled out for me. But just — just Dean's feelings on coming back to this like “Stranger in a Strange Land” world.

Bea: Yeah, this home has found a new rhythm and pattern, and he doesn't know the tempo, he doesn't know the beat. He doesn't even know if he can match the steps to it just yet. It's all too new to him and he almost wants to take a step back from it like, “Okay, I don't want to engage with this just yet. I'm going to look at what I know is the bigger problem, and that problem is Michael.”

Remmy: Yeah. But first we do have a little reunion, right?

Bea: We have reunions! Yeah, Jack’s the first to spot that Dean's back, and he asks in this incredulous way, “Is it really you?” and Dean is good ol’ Dean at this moment, or at least really giving the impression of it. [Dean] gives the kid a hug, and Cas comes into the room and Cas is just beaming. Dean gives this assured nod like, “Hey, good to see you.”

Remmy: Cas comes into the room on a swelling musical note.

Bea: Yeah, I have that written down too: _Cas walks in to the music swelling._

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: And he's just beaming joyful. He's so glad that Dean is back.

Remmy: And I'm sitting there like, did no one f****** call them? You just had a 10-hour drive from Duluth and you're like ???

Bea: Yeah, there had to have been a call, but I think it would still be one thing to hear the news and then to actually see it. These are characters that so often get used to the rug being pulled out from underneath them, that it’d be like, “Yeah, okay you got Dean, mhmm mhmm. It's going to be a 10-hour drive, something's going to get f***** up on this way. I'm going to reserve my hope until I see it in person.”

Remmy: It was good. But then again, Dean is pretty overwhelmed in this moment, and he takes a step — he removes himself from all the concern.

Bea: Yeah, Dean is seeing a lot of activity going on around him and he's getting a lot of emotions put towards him. One of the first things that he said with Sam on this episode — it's like he cut Sam off from asking if he's fine, just assures, “Yes, I am.” [scuffle noises] Aww, my cat fell and she ran like a furious devil out of the room. She's like, “I'm embarrassed, don't look at me.”

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: But yeah, he just genuinely wants to go back to situation normal, and I think that having so much attention on him from Sam, Cas, and Jack at the same time is just reinforcing the fact that something happened here. Dean wants to just go back to routine, so he's going to excuse himself [by] saying he needs to shower.

Remmy: Yeah, and he goes back to his room. He starts shedding the last pieces of the Michael monkey suit, even though — y’know, Jensen I gotta hand it to you, that was a pretty good look on you.

Bea: It was a good look.

Remmy: Uh-huh.

Bea: And the fact that it was still Michael’s clothes but you could see that it was Dean wearing it, and Dean's discomfort with the look when Jensen is able to play Michael as being so confident with it. Lots of good layers going on here, literally and figuratively.

Remmy: Yeah, it was good. But as he was taking off Michael’s shirt, he notices _the scar_.

Bea: The scar. The namesake

Remmy: Every time I say “the scar” I'm going to use the same gravitas on it. The ominousness.

Bea: [laughs] Yeah, and it's the new shoulder scar on Dean. The scar 2.0.

Remmy: Different shoulder! Don't sully my memory with — 

Bea: [laughs] Of the handprint?

Remmy: Uh-huh.

Bea: Yeah, he is stripping his clothes off and when he looks in the mirror, just peeking out, he frowns down at what he sees. Not to skip over this [either], but we were getting a voiceover of Cas and Sam voicing their concern for Dean at this moment, too, and Sam saying, “The truth is we don't know anything of what Dean went through, what's going on,” and Cas just wants to know how Dean really is. They’re looking for the truth, the honesty of this moment, because when you think of what happened, what Dean went through, it's a pretty traumatizing thing. You were possessed by somebody else and you're doing a big ol’ murder out there that you're not in control of.

Remmy: It was Lucifer levels of WTF-ery.

Bea: Oh, speaking of Lucifer, we get that tossaway line of Sam asking how is Nick, and Jack and Cas being like, “Oh yeah, we lost him.”

Remmy: Uh-huh. It's exactly — I literally laughed out loud because it was exactly what I said last week, like, hey Sam's going to get home and Cas is just going to be standing at the bottom of the stairs like, “I'm sorry.”

Bea: [laughs] “Listen, I did my best, okay? I left him phone messages, I was calling — he wasn't answering. And he left a note basically being like, ‘I'm going through a big emo phase, don't try and contact me, goodbye.’” Bye, Nick, we won't see you this week.

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: But yeah, so Dean has spotted the scar on his arm, and we cut over to the next scene where he's dressed himself up in his good ol’ earthy tones and he is just, once again, pushing forward. He's going, “We gotta find out how this happened, because this must have happened while Michael [was] possessing me, clearly, and so if something was able to injure him we need to know what that something was.” So he bangs his fist on the table, he's good to go, assuring them that a Vulcan mind-meld is welcome.

Remmy: He — yeah, he is immediately just action. “Cas, I need you to figure out what's going on.” That little drum-drum: cutie.

Bea: And being like, “C’mon, hit me,” and he leaves it to Sam and Cas to be more worried, like, “Dean, you just had someone inside your mind controlling you for three weeks and now you are inviting someone else in, just like that, like it's no big deal?” They're expecting Dean to be in a more fragile state than Dean is willing to admit or to even let on.

Remmy: Yeah, so Cas approaches with caution, but he does dive in.

Bea: Yeah. there is a level of taking Dean at face value, like, “That's what you want to say you are? You say you’re fine? Okay, we're going to have trust that you are being honest to us so let's go ahead.” And yeah, so Cas touches Dean's temples, they do a quick flashback of the things that we've seen Michael do this season, but it's not enough. We don't get the insight we need.

Remmy: So then we have that diving deeper moment, where Cas pulls back and Dean seems a little shook, but he is determined to keep going because he knows, just like Cas knows, that they haven't got what they needed. So Cas grabs his shoulder at the scar and really — I don't know, how did you read how that was affecting Dean?

Bea: What I took [from] Cas grabbing the scar itself was [it] is doing a reminder of the physical presence of it, and that Dean seems shook up about it — I think that there is a level of digging through repression that he wasn't anticipating, so it might not be what we should read just as _textual_ , but there is definitely the impression that we're supposed to get that this is a traumatizing thing for him to go through, this undigging of the memories, and the memory itself that is being found was not a pleasant one.

Remmy: Yeah, and it's like you said, on first look we're going back on all the things that we've seen as the viewer in the past two episodes, but for Dean — and what we have seen is murder and conspiracy and an army of monsters, and especially if these memories hadn't been clear to Dean before, it's a lot to take in now.

Bea: Yes, yes, because so far Dean has given the impression that what he went through hasn't shaken him whatsoever. The question remains: is he lying, or does he genuinely not remember? If he doesn't remember, then having these things dug up is going to be a shock and it's going to be overwhelming.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: And yeah, Dean is twitching his way through that, and they see a figure appear from the memories that Dean is summoning forth. There’s the stab wound that this figure has caused on Michael’s arm, and when Cas stops the mind-meld that he's doing right now, the first thing he asked Dean is, “Who was that?”

Remmy: And Dean says, “I don't know,” but we cut immediately to Sam, Cas, and Dean gathered around the phone and — let me just say, they're really cute in that moment. They're gathered around the phone talking to Jody — oh no, we cut to Jody!

Bea: Yep. Jody is receiving a text message from Claire, and it's this super cute domestic little thing like, “I finished laundry, now do you have any good chores for me? Any good ol’ monstery chores?”

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: And Jody — we get this unspoken backstory of what's going on with them since the last time we saw them. They've negotiated this truce where if Jody has a case and it's strictly human-related then Jody takes care of it, but if it's monster-related then she will let Claire know and Claire will get to participate on it.

Remmy: Yeah, and this is a big move from what we've seen from any[thing] Jody and Claire. It started out with Jody adamantly against Claire hunting monsters, but Claire went off and would do it anyways. Through the past few years we've been moving towards an acceptance of hunter Claire, Jody becoming more accepting of that, and this is — finally we seem settled and content in that dynamic.

Bea: Well, on the surface, again, because as we get later in this episode we start seeing the tension Jody carries with this. Jody still carries a very protective nature in her and she still has a lot of fears revolving around Claire going down this life path. But yeah, Jody takes the call and she immediately assumes that it has to do with Dean. She's asking if there's any news, and I like how Sam sort of slaps Dean into talking, just nudges his arm, and then Dean's like, “Hey, Jody,” and she's so relieved to hear Dean speak.

Remmy: Yeah, we have Dean, Sam, and Cas all gathered around the table talking on speakerphone. It was a good shot. It was really cute. I think that the directing in this episode was really good too, so yay.

Bea: Yeah. And Cas basically is like, “Well, that's the good news part,” and it's like aw crap what's the bad news? They think that whatever killed Kaia is somewhere out there and so they ask Jody if there's been any sort of rift activity going on. We get a quick callback to what happened last season at the ferry, where a rift open into the Bad Place, and Jody assures us that there is surveillance ongoing out there and Claire has locked down that place too. She is — again, we're getting so much insight into what Claire has been going through since the last time that we saw her.

Remmy: As soon as Sam says “Kaia’s killer” you just see in Jody that instant _ooh boy_.

Bea: Yeah. There's this recognition and tension that was going on, because she lost one of her girls that day — one of her new girls, but one of her girls nonetheless.

Remmy: She just knows that this is big, and we get more insight later on why this is waking up some more worries for Claire in particular.

Bea: Yeah, this is big bad news. But the scar that they mention from the vision of Dean's memories also coincides with some scars that have been showing up in Jody's area. She's like, “What a coinkydink! Hop on over,” and so Sam, Dean, and Cas set to packing their bags and getting ready to head out.

Remmy: Well, not _scars_. She's got three bodies — she's got three headless bodies with a stab wound through the chest.

Bea: I — yeah. I guess technically they haven't healed into scars and they never will.

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah, so what she thought was just your regular old serial killer is — well, now she has a different lead.

Bea: “Oh hey!” So yeah, Sam, Dean, and Cas are packing up their bags in the library, and Jack catches them and goes like, “Oh, you're leaving? I want to go with.” He insists that Michael is his enemy, and that he also feels this responsibility for having dragged Kaia into the life that they're leading. He was kind of the inciting incident for her fridging, and so he wants to go and be part of the cleanup — 

Remmy: Ooh, Bea, ooh. Throwing some shade there with your word choices, huh? [laughs]

Bea: Is it shade, or is it just a fact.

Remmy: No, I'm not disagreeing with you, nope. My hands are up on this one.

Bea: I'm like yeah, it's not shade. I'm sorry, you had the character. She was a really cool, dynamic, interesting character who deserved a lot of screen time, and she got killed for tragic meaning towards another character's story, so... [deep sigh] What could have been, what could have been...

Remmy: I love it when Bea gets salty. Usually I'm the one who's complaining all the time. This is great.

Bea: This isn't even salty — 

Remmy: I'm going to call it salty [laughs]

Bea: You're welcome to but — I'm just like, this is reduced-sodium salt. It's not even nothing. I'll let you know when I — you'll know when I get salty, okay? [laughs]

Remmy: Okay. I look forward to it. I look forward to the day.

Bea: But yeah, woof. Scene.

Remmy: Sorry to keep interrupting. I keep pulling you off-track on this one.

Bea: Nah, it needs to be said. Poor Kaia can't get dismissed so easily despite how the narrative did it. Knowing that Wayward wasn't going to get picked up and there was the potential for her storyline to just end there... I'm glad that it wasn't left unresolved, that we were able to revisit it again with this episode. We can talk about it later in further detail once we finally have Dean and Dark Kaia in a scene.

Remmy: Yes.

Bea: But yes, for now Jack wants to go, and Cas and Sam are trying to be the nice dads and find a gentle way to break this to him, like on the last episode where Mary was able to say, kindly but firmly, “We need you to sit out. It's not permanent,” and now we have good ol’ Dean who's like, “Why the f*** are you coming along? Have you seen _you_?” and Jack is just a wounded puppy, gotta wander off — 

Remmy: A hundred pounds soaking wet!

Bea: The looks [Dean]'s getting — yeah, a hundred pounds soaking wet.

Remmy: — is specifically what he said, and I only bring it up because I liked the line. Yes, Jack's face, that just, “Oh...” and he wanders off, and then both the identical b**** faces from Cas and Sam.

Bea: Oh yeah, Sam looking like “Really?” and Cas having the more disappointed “... Really?” and Dean's just like, “Oh yeah, I have this inherent dick —” [laughs] the worst Dick Energy, if you want to say that, just intrinsically comes out in these moments. He didn't mean to, he just has his mind focused on what's the next step, what is the next part of this action plan, and he doesn't see Jack as part of it so — beep bop boop — let's get that cut off, let's get on the move.

Remmy: Yep, but as they're heading out...

Bea: Yep. Jack, we watch him walk off, and down the stairs comes another hunter named Jules. She is carrying a victim with her that she's brought home from Wichita after killing this witch who seems to be leaving these dessicated corpses around town.

Remmy: Yeah, so this girl is obviously struggling. There's something wrong.

Bea: Yeah, she's not having a good time.

Remmy: Uh-huh. And Sam and Cas are like, “What's happened? What's up?” and Jules explains the witch situation, and Cas does his lay-on-hands on this young girl.

Bea: I'm like, “Cas, I love you because we have a perspective that tells us about you, but look from this girl's perspective, okay?” She just got — I'm not going to say ‘kidnapped’ even though it's the first word that comes to mind — but she's been taken from Wichita to this underground bunker, and the first thing that happens to her upon arriving here is this trenchcoated man appears and puts his hand on her face.

Remmy: I know! [laughs]

Bea: There's no, “Hi, how are you?” or anything like that. It's just, “I'm going to stick my fingy on your face,” and then, “Okay, I guess I'm accepting this because this is my life now. There's witches. There's witch-killing bullets. Okay, I'll just take that at face value.”

Remmy: Uh-huh. Yeah, no, she does — her face when he just puts — again, not a word!

Bea: Like, “Oh, okay. Is this a hand? Oh.”

Remmy: Not a word to this poor girl, he just sticks his hand in her face. It's a nice hand, though. I had some thoughts about the Misha hand porn in this episode; there's a lot of Misha hand porn in this episode. [laughs] I just call it like I see it guys.

Bea: No, yeah, that was definitely there and it's a good hand.

Remmy: Uh-huh.

Bea: But yeah, he does that, and to add insult to injury for this poor girl it does nothing. So she just like, “What the f*** is this.” Now [I’m] imagining Jules and her sitting in the car on the drive there and Jules being like, “Don't worry! They have an angel in this bunker,” and she's [inwardly] like, “Okay, the passenger door’s locked, I can't leave this moving vehicle…”

Remmy: [laughs] Kidnapping!

Bea: “How much worse could it get?”

Remmy: First word to come to mind and you're not wrong.

Bea: Yep.

Remmy: But Cas cannot heal this girl right off the bat, so he decides to stay behind, and again just like — okay, but to be fair, last episode didn't do the thing I thought they were going to do. But I had the same thought this time which was, “Oh, we’re shuttling off Cas.”

Bea: You've been so bitten by the show that you're just ready for that to be the bad scene coming to you.

Remmy: Luckily we have — we still have all of our leads throughout the entire episode, but Dean and Cas say — well, you tell me.

Bea: Yeah, so Cas makes the executive decision that he's going to stay behind and see about helping this girl get her health back. Sam initially seems unsure, but we're following this great trend of the characters trusting each other’s vision or trusting each other's judgment, and so when Cas says he wants to stay then Dean backs him up immediately like, “Yep, you got it under control. You go here, we'll go there.”

Remmy: Yeah, and Sam I think it's like — I think the telling moment in that scene was Sam says, “Are you sure? Cas, are you sure?” and Dean said, “Yeah no, let's go.”

Bea: Yeah, Dean just knows that Cas can handle it and so it's an item that he can tick off the box. That's going to be taken care of, we can focus on this, and he just wants to get at the door.

Remmy: Well, yeah, I would not have read that as Dean trusting Cas to handle the situation even though that's true. That was definitely not the thought in the moment. The thought in the moment was, “Let's _go_.”

Bea: Yes, yes. He just has a “head down, feet running” approach to this episode, and you can see Sam lagging behind him just wishing that Dean could perhaps slow down. It's discussed in the very next scene: Sam and Dean are in the Impala, Dean is driving, and we see the speedometer flexing above 70 mph and Sam is being attentive to that fact that Dean seems to be speeding towards where they're going.

Remmy: Yes.

Bea: But it's not an unreasonable speed. The speed limit would be about 70 mph on the actual road they're on, so he's just going up to 80 mph. He's not being reckless, he's just being decisive. Dean wants to go there and he's going to get them there faster if he can help it.

Remmy: Yeah. I mean, my only thought there was, y’know, that's a classic car. They don't go that fast, so...

Bea: [laughs] The engine would just be thrumming. They would be yelling at each other. It's a muscle car, though. Aren’t those supposed to be speedy-speedy-go?

Remmy: Not that old. See, I know a little somethin’ somethin’ about classic cars, and I mean — really, I read that scene 100% as he was literally pushing it as hard as she would go, and that was concerning Sam.

Bea: Yeah, I don't know

Remmy: I mean, who knows how Dean has tricked out his ride. But that vroom-vroom of that scene, I was just like, she must be a-rattling at this point.

Bea: Maybe, yeah. I don't know, I must be coming in with the modern perspective like, 80 mph? Ah yeah, that's not bad.

Remmy: Well, so Sam calls Dean out, like, “Oh, you're in a hurry,” but then immediately gets a little b****y about it.

Bea: Yeah, Dean's just like, “What's the problem?”

Remmy: And then Sam's like, “Oh, I'll tell you my f****** problem. I've been looking for you for three weeks. I haven't had a moment to breathe. You haven't had a moment to breathe. We need to slow down.”

Bea: Yeah, he's bringing up the five W's of Michael: we don't know where he is, we don't know what he's doing, and Dean gets a little flippant about it like, “We don't know his favorite Spice Girl either.” Har har, Dean, this is serious business.

Remmy: Right.

Bea: And so Sam just — they're not at the same pace with each other right now. Sam wants to take a moment to examine what Dean has gone through and to reassess what's the damage that they're working with, y’know? What are the repercussions of Dean being possessed by Michael.

Remmy: And Dean's having none of it.

Bea: Exactly. Dean doesn't want anything to do with that examination. He basically wants to take the event of being possessed by Michael and stick it in a box and Tuck tape that box shut. “We hide our feelings inside and pour booze over it to make the feelings go away.”

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: We haven't seen him go to that drinking level of things yet, but he has done the reverse unboxing. He has tucked that s*** away.

Remmy: This is quintessential Dean, for sure. Sam says, “Just talk to me. Take a breath. We need to get on the same page,” which is valid. But when he says, “We need to slow down,” he kind of — what he says is exactly the wrong thing right. He says, “I've been looking for you and so scared for the past month, and for you — bam — you're back in the blink of an eye.”

Bea: Yeah. “This might have been no time for you, but there's been time for me, and I have jet lag that I need to work through.”

Remmy: And as soon as Sam says that, Dean shuts down completely. You can just see it in his demeanor, his face. He shoots a little glance at Sam as soon as Sam says, “You know, for you maybe it was nothing, but for me this has been the worst month of my life.” He doesn't say that, but paraphrasing.

Bea: Yeah. Dean, when he hears that from Sam, he goes to change the subject by just telling [Sam] to do something else. Text Jody, let her know — call Jody, let her know we're almost there. Let's change the subject.

Remmy: Yeah, and then we vroom out of the scene. Dean is done.

Bea: Yeah, he — there's nothing more to gain from that conversation, because there's assumptions that are coming in that he bristles up against.

Remmy: Well, I'm putting so much emphasis on this because this is exactly the moment that we revisit later.

Bea: Yeah, honestly because there are so many subtleties that are going on this episode overall. At some point you want to take your characters at face value, but there is also the fact that characters can lie, and so we don't always know the characters are lying. When the narrative allows us to see it in one light and then revisit it again in another, it's a really satisfying narrative move.

Remmy: Yeah, and this is the moment that we were invited to revisit later.

Bea: To ponder on.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: Yeah. From this scene we carry into Sam and Dean meeting Jody in a forest, and let me tell you — I see that forest and I'm like _that is not in South Dakota_. I get unreasonably angry — 

Remmy: [laughs] Oh my god.

Bea: — I go to Google Maps and I find something within there and I'm like, “Yep, it is f****** flat-ass prairie there.” I know what this should look like, and there ain't no forest that looks like that... [blustering noises]

Remmy: [laughing] And you're — 

Bea: I just become that anytime South Dakota comes up. I don't even have any skin in the game, but like don't do the prairies dirty.

Remmy: It's not even your country!

Bea: No, it's not! But I'm like, “This boring-ass piece of land looks like my boring-ass piece of land,” and it did not look like that on the screen.

Remmy: [laughs] See, I — 

Bea: We're being falsely represented as deciduous and s***.

Remmy: Hey, I grew up in a conifer state — is that what...

Bea: We're a grass state! That's the thing!

Remmy: I'm saying, I grew up in a coniferous state and so for me, I'm like, “Yeah, that checks out.”

Bea: Yeah, no, this is prairie. We had bison f****** stomping out any chance of trees, it was like “This is grassland!” and then you tell me that the trees had f****** staked out a claim this large in South Dakota? I ain't buying it!

Remmy: Yeah, I've not been north of f****** Ohio, so you can’t...

Bea: Heated rant, heated rant.

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: I'm okay. It's a stupid detail, I know it's [filmed] in Vancouver, but I always feel done dirty when I see a f****** forest pop up where there shouldn't be [one].

Remmy: Oh my god.

Bea: But, granted — not to skip ahead, but if Dark Kaia was trying to hide out in South Dakota, she'd have to be crawling around on the ground on her belly. She'd be going through canola fields, she'd be going through corn fields. It would be nowhere near as dramatic.

Remmy: Why is she even in South Dakota? [laughs]

Bea: Yeah, and can we just take a moment to discuss what the f***? Because I'm like, “Girl, you're hiding in the same hundred acres of fictitious forest that belongs in South Dakota?” Michael could just seriously radar-track you in that little square. You're so lucky that you stabbed him and he got pissy and like, “You know what? F*** you. I'm going to throw monsters at you until one of them succeeds because a) monsters are expendable and b) [whiny voice] I don't want you to wreck my clothes again!”

Remmy: [spit laughs]

Bea: I don't know, apparently I have a lot of feelings about this f****** fake forest that Kaia was living in, eating the same can of beans over and over!

Remmy: [weeps laughing]

Bea: Every time this girl gets f****** interrupted, she has a can of beans to her mouth! She's like, “Ohh shit, gotta run.”

Remmy: I'm not — oh my god, I don't know if I'm going to cut it, but there was definitely just a real wet sploosh as I just spit-taked my water.

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: What the f***! I'm sorry, I got quiet only because I was trying not to die.

Bea: [laughing] damage control, damage — 

Remmy: [laughs] I was like, “Oh my god, is there Coke on my notes? No? Okay, we're good.”

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: Oh my god, okay. But yes.

Bea: “Passionate about beans and forests,” okay? Write that s*** down on my résumé.

Remmy: [laughs] I did get Coke on my notes but they're still legible so. I do know that we are now in this forest with Jody, Sam, and Dean — 

Bea: This fictitious forest.

Remmy: — and [laughs] the b******t fantasy forest.

Bea: This fantasy forest, yeah. And then there's hugs.

Remmy: I know! The hugs are good.

Bea: Jody gives Dean a hug, and there's this cute banter between them, like, “C’mon, would you bet on Michael or would you bet on me?” and she's like, “Oh, you every time.” Just she's such a good mom. Good mom Jody!

Remmy: I have got to take better notes, because I just have “JODY” in all caps underlined three times, and I know it was something that she said but I have no idea what.

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: I was like, Oh my god, Jody, you're the best.

Bea: Yeah. She gives hugs to both the boys, and then we get a quick rundown that Alex is still at the hospital, Patience is still in school, and Claire is still being Claire.

Remmy: Yep, yep, yep, and Jody compliments the grief beard. I guess I can't call it the grief beard anymore but ehh.

Bea: It's the inspiration behind it. But yeah, she compliments the beard, and you can see Sam doing this look to Dean like, “Yeah, I told you so!”

Remmy: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Actually, Sam does a lot of background looks in this scene, and they're all gold, solid gold.

Bea: Yes. Again, they have such — they have that brotherly dynamic coming up in these moments that could be super-serious, and they still are, but we get a bit of levity with it to just again being reminded that the characters are so familiar with each other. I’m like, chef's kiss.

Remmy: I'm going to read it as Jensen and Jared just spent two to three weeks not working together on set and this is the Jared-and-Jensen reunion of just like...

Bea: Of faces.

Remmy: So I think that in a lot of ways, in this whole episode, Sam just is quintessential b**** little brother, but it's also a little bit Jared. Puppy Jared did without his playtoy for two weeks, so we're catching up.

Bea: Yeah. We also hear from Jody that she's a little bit apprehensive about bringing the news of this case towards Claire, because she wants to maintain this honesty that she and Claire have found of, y’know, if something has to do with monsters she'll bring it to Claire. So to get around letting her know about this case right away, she's just avoiding Claire for the moment.

Remmy: I know, yeah, and I really do want to Google Maps figure out how long it takes to get from Lebanon to Sioux Falls, because did she sleep at the office? Like, what?

Bea: I know! This is a very dark night — does she have the next day off? Is this a Saturday? I don't know how police shifts work and I'm like, “I'm an idiot. I shouldn't think about in this detail.”

Remmy: Well, I had the same thought in a later scene. But Sam says, “Okay, so we think what we're dealing is definitely not a serial killer, so we're dealing with something and we think that something is Kaia's killer. So should we wait until morning, wait until daylight to track this thing down?” and Dean says, “No, no. Let's go,” like, why? Let's go now. He just stomps out into the woods. He is gone.

Bea: Once again, head down, feet running.

Remmy: Yep.

Bea: And sidebar, but I do like that we get to see Sam and his serial killer obsession crop up here. He knows right away that it was Robert Leroy Anderson that was the serial killer that Jody was thinking about. Sam says it's so proudly, and Dean's just like, “Really? You're on that again?”

Remmy: Again, another Look.

Bea: Yes. Again, Faces.

Remmy: More faces yeah, yeah, because Jody brings up like, “Yeah, I thought it was just your run-of-the-mill serial killer. First one Sioux Falls has seen since —” and then True Crime Sam to the rescue.

Bea: Yep, yep. The first one in about 25 years — 23 years?

Remmy: And again — I have no idea [laughs]

Bea: It was ‘96.

Remmy: Oh, you actually did the math?

Bea: Yeah, it was Piper Streyle who was the victim that he got arrested for in 1996, and then through jailhouse informants they also found that he had killed Larisa Dumansky in 1994.

Remmy: Oh my god. You Googled it.

Bea: I could tell you about it.

Remmy: [awed] You Googled it.

Bea: Yeah! True crime obsession!

Remmy: You're the true crime nerd!

Bea: [defensive] Yeah?

Remmy: “Yeah, what of it?”

Bea: Yeah, what about it? Do you want to start something?

Remmy: I think I just inadvertently imitated your Canadian “yeah” and I apologize.

Bea: [exaggerated] Ya, what aboot it eh? 

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: You want to talk about it some, eh? That's not even Canadian, that's just me getting shrill.

Remmy: You, shrill? _You_ , shrill?

Bea: Don't be a hoser! Don't be beaking me.

Remmy: What the f*** was that even — I don’t — 

Bea: Don't be beakin’ me, Remmy! 

Remmy: [laughing]

Bea: You keep beaking me!

Remmy: Okay, okay, I can't. I can't. Let's move on.

Bea: I can dance all day.

Remmy: No! No, I don't [laughs]

Bea: But yeah. Piper Streyle. Larisa Dumansky. Rest in peace. So yeah, Dean does not want to wait until daybreak. He is like, it's dark and spooky and it's a fictitious forest, let's go. Jody's a little bit like “... Okay.” Again, she doesn't really know what has happened to Dean, and Dean has come to her pretending all is well with jokesy stuff, and yet she can even pick up that there's something a little off with him.

Remmy: Yep, yep. Dean is just super gung-ho and now we have Jody and Sam exchanging those Looks.

Bea: Yep, they're the new parents in this situation. But we cut back to the bunker, where Jack is packing up his belongings in his bedroom, and he leaves with his book bag. He's left a note on his bed that is directed towards Dean, Sam, and Cas, and as he is about to sneak up through the main stairway he overhears Jules and Cas talking in the infirmary nearby. He goes to the door and looks in, and instead of leaving he asks about the victim, and finds out more about Laura, and that she's been enchanted — is how Castiel puts it — and Jack's experience level interprets this back to fairy tales. “Like Sleeping Beauty?”

Remmy: Again, that kind of — well, we saw him last season, “Like Luke Skywalker?” and it's just so — He's still learning and when he said, “So like Sleeping Beauty?” in that hopeful tone, “So we're going to find the equivalent of true love's kiss and break the enchantment?” and Cas looks at Jack, obviously not wanting to disillusion him, but...

Bea: Yeah, Jack’s found this measure of pride in being able to form a cultural analogy, and it hasn't quite met the mark. But Cas is, again, trying to be such a supportive dad. He doesn't want to break Jack's heart about this and just goes, “Eh, not quite,” and explains what they think is going on, and they had contacted Rowena who suggested a reversal spell to help Laura regain her vitality.

Remmy: Yep. And they are working on the reversal, yep.

Bea: Cas is a bit distracted when he looks back to Jack. He goes, “Oh, are you going somewhere?” He notices the book bag only then. Jack has made a decision in the time he's been here to say, no, I want to stay. “I wasn't going anywhere,” basically.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: “What are you talking about? You're crazy.”

Remmy: Yeah. “I only have a bulging backpack that has my entire cupboard in it, but yeah.”

Bea: “I just carry that around the bunker for exercise.”

Remmy: I — my one big thought here it's like, where was he going? What did the note say? What is he doing? I'm so curious. I'm so curious!

Bea: What it is is just Nick’s note refolded and put in an envelope, but Jack's crossed out Nick’s name and put his own. “I'm going to hike out and do my own adventure! You guys don’t trust me —” sweeps hair over one eye “— I can do it on my own. I don't need you, Dad!” Jack was just going to make it out on his own, who knows where he was going with that book bag, but he's got gumption, he's got style. He’d make it far, I'm sure, I mean, with all those bloody tissues... spoilers-not-spoilers... 

Remmy: Aww, spoilers-not-spoilers, Bea!

Bea: I'm sorry, it's a half-hour spoiler. Cut it out, I don't care. Cut that out.

Remmy: Cut it out [laughs] Oh my gosh. So yeah, Jack, wherever he was going, whatever was in that note, which I am still so curious about, we just won't bring it up.

Bea: But [instead] he's going to stay because of the Sleeping Beauty concept being played out in reality — I mean, that's not the reason why, but I'll say that flippantly as to why he's staying.

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: So we go back to Jody, Sam, and Dean now, and today it's daylight in the fictitious forest, and Dean is suggesting that they split up to cover more ground.

Remmy: Exactly. I was just like, have they been walking all night? Did no one — again, Jody was like, “I haven't been home yet.” What is this?

Bea: Did they take a nap, or did they bring a shitload of Red Bulls? Did they have those 6-hour energy drinks?

Remmy: No one has backpacks!

Bea: Nono, Dean has a backpack. Sam has a backpack.

Remmy: Ohh, okay. Okay. 

Bea: Jody's playing loose from the hip but — 

Remmy: [laughs] I'm glad that you know these things.

Bea: I try and be attentive. They packed those backpacks in the library. I noticed that the duffel bag that Cas was packing was also the color of his trenchcoat so I was like, “Does Cas have his own bag, or was he just packing one for those two? And if it is his bag, then why did he pick trenchcoat tan?”

Remmy: Cas was originally planning on going.

Bea: He's like, “I'm a fashionista too. Trenchcoat is my way.”

Remmy: [laughs] I did notice that the only thing we saw Cas packing away into his own bag was a wooden crucifix.

Bea: [laughs] He's like, “This is Holy. I need to bring this. I need something holier than me.” Couldn't he just make a T-symbol with his hands and that count? I mean he's an angel. I don't know, can you tell I'm a little bit tired?

Remmy: No [laughs]

Bea: But yeah, Dean suggests they split up, and I love Jody's little hand gestures like, “Uhh, no, if we get a vote —” and she just swoops between them “— I vote that we stay together.”

Remmy: Uh-huh, because Dean wants to split the party, and Sam says, “Have you never played D&D? We do not split the party!”

Bea: Basically! “Do you want to roll badly and kill us all? We don't need a TPK here.”

Remmy: And yeah, Jody's little, “Um if I get a vote, then I say stick together,” that was super cute.

Bea: I have one sentence here that just says _Looks_.

Remmy: Again with the Looks.

Bea: She and Sam just Look at each other.

Remmy: So many background Looks from Sam this episode, and they're all so expressive and so good. It was great. And Dean just says, “Fine,” and stomps off.

Bea: Yeah, he — and eventually through their stumbling around they find a fortified camp within this fictitious forest, and it has three piked heads on its perimeter and, lo and behold, Sam pokes at the mouth and we find that it was vampires.

Remmy: I just imagine that she's in a little 5-acre by 5-acre patch of trees behind some park — in between a park and a highway — 

Bea: Oh yeah.

Remmy: — and there's this f****** encampment with heads on pikes.

Bea: Yeah, she's made this little lean-to, she's staked out her claim with these three heads, like, who are you scaring away with that?

Remmy: And we did get a little interesting tidbit here when they're talking. So they find these heads, and they confirm that these are not in fact people — humans — they are vampires.

Bea: But Jody's taken aback by this.

Remmy: Yes, because she stops Sam — Dean is, again, kind of charging ahead into the encampment — but she stops Sam and says, “Wait. But I did the checks with Alex. I sent her some tissue samples from the bodies, and we did all the checks: silver, holy water, dead man’s blood.”

Bea: No man's blood — ugh, no man's land!

Remmy: Dead man's blood. “Nothing affected them. This is why I thought that this was just a human thing,” and I think that's super interesting too, like, is this standard [procedure for Jody]? It's kind of that Wayward Sisters groundwork that we're laying here.

Bea: Yeah, there's these really small lines and really small moments that [are] speaking so much about this world that we don't get to see on the daily. Because this is the Sam-and-Dean show rather than the side-character show, but ugh — I feel like we're going to talk later about the Wayward feelings in-depth. It is further comfort, but it's also further salt in the wound about what could have been.

Remmy: It is. And so I was just like, is the standard operation? Does Jody just steal a f****** skin slice off these bodies and send them to her daughter? 

Bea: Well, I feel like the average body that comes in she’ll be like, “Uhh, it's fine,” but she had three headless bodies that have pokey marks in them, and she's like, “Well, that's not normal,” and so she’ll run the books on those.

Remmy: That's true.

Bea: But yeah, I feel there has to be this hierarchy of weird that she works through, because you know that the second she brings home something that might be monster-related, Claire's ears are going to prick right forward and she's going to be so excited and like, “Do I get to be involved in this?” So I can imagine that Jody is a little bit — she has a certain rubric that she'll measure a case against before she'll go and involve the girls with it.

Remmy: Yeah, and we even saw in that brief text message exchange that even when Jody has told Claire, “No, it's just a human thing,” she is still gnawing on that bone. She’s still like, “Is it monsters yet? Is it monsters yet?”

Bea: Yep! She is looking for something that she can dig into.

Remmy: Mhmm.

Bea: So while Sam and Jody are looking at the vampire heads, Dean has gone over to the fire [pit]. He sees that the stones are still warm, and there is a can of food that is also hot to the touch, so they mustn't have missed the camper here by much.

Remmy: Yeah, and Dean slowly rises from his crouch, and he turns around and he sees something familiar. He sees the landscape of trees that he saw in his vision of Michael getting stabbed, or his memory of Michael getting stabbed with this spear, and he knows — now knows — that he's in the same spot that Michael was injured in.

Bea: Yes, so that tells us that it must have been one of the more recent things that Michael had done, to go and try and find the spear. Because if this conflict that Dean remembers, with the figure that we know is Dark Kaia, has happened and she hasn't moved along yet then it makes me wonder whether her confrontation with Michael was recent, or if she has rotating camps and just happened to come back to this one, or what the case is. What happened for her history.

Remmy: I totally read that as this Michael confrontation had to have been very recent for Kaia to still be there exactly there.

Bea: That makes sense. I think where my confusion came up was that when Cas was doing the mind-reading for Dean, we almost went in reverse order for the things that Dean had — was being picked up from Dean's thoughts. So this read to me as it would be something that was deeper into the past, but it could be true that it was deeper in the subconscious.

Remmy: Yeah, that read to me as it was deeper in his repression.

Bea: Yeah. But at any rate, he stands up — Dean stands up and Dark Kaia is there, and they get into a fight right off the bat. She is doing some — woof. I'm like, wow, the choreography [fight noises]

Remmy: [laughs] So okay, Kaia, Dark Kaia — I can't call her Dark Kaia because I'm just so ugh, ugh — Kaia feels, I just — but Kaia, she's so extra with this spear.

Bea: Oh, I know! She's got Dramatic B**** Disease, she's just — again, we're going pure aesthetic. “I [have] to look f****** cool while I'm killing.”

Remmy: Absolutely, it's — yeah, so they are — I loved how she just literally appeared between all three of them, Jody, Sam, and Dean. She just appeared as a spectre in this triangle of hunters.

Bea: Oh yeah, that they were all just standing around with their fingers in their noses, and then she's like, “Bam! Got you. Kick ass, kick ass, kick ass.”

Remmy: Yeah, because she fends off all three of them in this circle, and it's like, “... Where did she come from?”

Bea: And there is a door _right there_. She's like, “No. You know what I'm going to do? Javelin. And then I'm going to — I'm doing my own track and field games right now. I'm going to do high jump. Following that, I'm going to do some cool somersaults. When I land, I'm grabbing my spear and I'm getting the f*** out.”

Remmy: Yep! And everyone is just left stunned in the wake of this — 

Bea: — of seeing the figure’s face, because up to this point it was like, “Oh, it's just somebody, and it's probably somebody that had to do with Kaia's death,” because we recognize that figure. But to know that it has the face of Kaia herself takes them all by surprise.

Remmy: Right, right. And Jody says, “It looked just like her. How is that possible?” and me, I'm like — my inner SPN is like, “... Bruh, you know like three things that can imitate a person’s face...”

Bea: Yeah! “How is that possible?” Jody asks, and Dean is just like, well, another action item. Let's go find her and ask.

Remmy: Yeah, “I don't know but let's find out.”

Bea: Yeah. This is an excellent excuse to keep on going.

Remmy: [laughs] And we go back to the bunker, and Cas and Jules and Jack.

Bea: Yes, they're still in the infirmary. Jules is reading through an ingredient list, and she goes, “Eugh, sheep’s eyes?” and Cas just knows exactly where that would be. He's like, “The storage room. The red box. It's in the one labeled ‘Gross Stuff’.” And you _know_ that Dean was the one responsible for that labeling system, right?

Remmy: Augh! So many inventory thoughts. So many hours of organizing and domestic team free will.

Bea: Yeah, like deciding — you sit there and go, “Are these eyes expired?” They would have been sorting through all the things that [were] in the Men of Letters bunker and deciding what things they would allowed to stay in their take in this environment.

Remmy: I know.

Bea: Yeah, and just “Gross Stuff”.

Remmy: [laughs] And for Cas to know exactly where it is. It's cute.

Bea: Yeah, I really liked it. It just spoke to, again, the backstory invitation we are given to imagine the characters lives. Any sort of insight into these moments that aren’t on camera, I really enjoy just being given a bone to gnaw on and think about.

Remmy: Bobo!

Bea: Thank you, Bobo.

Remmy: Thank you, Bobo.

Bea: So yeah, they're looking through the ingredient list, and while this is going on Laura asks if Cas is Jack's dad and Jack answers — 

Remmy: Laura is — 

Bea: Yes. Laura is the victim of the witch’s spell. Laura asks if Cas is Jack's dad and Jack answers that Cas is _one_ of them.

Remmy: That also — I mean, Bobo!

Bea: Yeah! For a viewer of the show, you know who all the characters are and yeah, that is one of Jack's dads. But when you see [it] from Laura's perspective, now she knows that Jack has more than one dad and — that information is given in such a casual manner. I just like it. It might be a small scrap but I'm sitting there going yum yum yum. 

Remmy: [laughs] I'm with you, I am 100% with you. I got my plate lined up for that buffet.

Bea: Yeah, and from Laura next we get — if I had to critique, I would say that [the next bit] felt a little heavy-handed.

Remmy: Oh, it did.

Bea: Laura goes into saying how her mom probably hates her right now because she ran away, and I wrote down “her one-stoplight town,” and I'm like, “B**** you're lucky you have a stoplight. Oh, you _have_ a stoplight? Good job, because I have stop signs! Little miss highty mighty doesn't realize what she —” Anyways. No, girl, I get it, this one stoplight town you ran away from. She got taken in by someone who seemed kind and that was going to be good and take care of her, but lo and behold, this person turned out to be a witch, and [Laura] and two other girls that were staying there ended up being locked up and one by one withering away.

Remmy: Oof yeah, yeah. I thought the exposition was a little heavy-handed, I absolutely agree. But yeah, we got all that information, and we see Jack just... growing attached... a little bit?

Bea: Yeah. This part of the exposition is meant for Jack, and the way that he was packing up a bag and intending to leave before he came to the infirmary. Now he is being given a cautionary tale of a character who was about to — or a character that _did_ the thing that he was about to do, and how it turned out badly for her.

Remmy: I didn't even think about that parallel, honestly. That's a good point.

Bea: I feel like that’s why that was there. It was just as a reminder to Jack of the things that he would have been giving up had he just walked out the door.

Remmy: Yeah, yeah. She never says anything negative about her mother, just that her family — she never says anything negative about her family and the home that she ran away from, it's just that she was...

Bea: Yeah, that home — she didn't feel like it was a place for her. She felt she had outgrown it and that there was more things out there in the world for her to pursue. Then when she went out into the world and met it, she was met with danger instead.

Remmy: Yeah, and she was — and she watched her friends die, and now she’s scared that she's going to meet the same fate. She's saying that she is withering away exactly as she saw her friends.

Bea: Yeah, the only difference is that she's going faster.

Remmy: Yeah, and in an exasperated — that's not the right word.

Bea: Exacerbated?

Remmy: [laughs] Let's pretend uh — 

Bea: — at a much faster — 

Remmy: — yeah, at a much faster rate. Again, we see Jack being very sympathetic, and he says — he tries to reassure her the best he can, which is to say — is to express his trust in Cas. He says, “Don't worry, Cas will fix this. Cas will know what to do.”

Bea: Yeah, “I promise Cas will fix this,” and [as] the scene ends, we can see that Cas has been listening into this conversation and perhaps doesn't feel Jack's level of confidence.

Remmy: Yeah, and Cas’ face in that moment is just — he definitely does not have the same confidence. You see that fear in him, that he's going to let Jack down. It was almost the same feeling as when Jack said, “Like Sleeping Beauty?” and Cas just had that face...

Bea: Yeah, Cas is struggling with, “How much do I bring the truth to him? How much do I shatter his perception in this moment?” Because he wants to let — he wants Jack to remain innocent and... not naive, but just [keep] the good heart that he has, and so these opportunities to break the illusion that Jack is under really get to Cas. He weighs them with difficulty.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: So after this scene, we go back to Sam and Jody following Dean, who is tracking Dark Kaia, and they bring up now that when they saw Kaia that she had bruises on her face. Sam and Jody don't say it explicitly, but they think that perhaps Kaia was scared of Michael, and so seeing Dean is probably the last thing that Kaia wants right now. But Dean hears all this and he's like, “Mhm mhm mhm _anyways_ ,” and wants to keep on going ahead. He's just stubborn about finding her regardless of these more emotional implications of his presence.

Remmy: Yeah, absolutely. Jody and Sam are still exchanging those Looks in the background.

Bea: Yes, Looks™.

Remmy: Uh-huh.

Bea: But back to the bunker, Cas and Jules are now actually doing the spell. This burst of purple cloud comes at the end of it, and they look to the victim Laura really hopefully like, “Okay, did this reverse spell work?” and Laura gasps and then she — I wrote — _super_ withers. She's — 

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: Someone's got a straw into her CapriSun of life and they're just [sucking] that container to the skinniest measure possible.

Remmy: That's one way to put it.

Bea: Yes. It's the way I put it.

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: I'm sorry. Do you want a different way?

Remmy: No, no [laughing]

Bea: “She f**ken _died_.”

Remmy: “She f**ken died.” [laughs]

Bea: She couldn't hardly breathe out the little gasps of “Help! Help!” that she was saying towards Jack, and Jack is just horrified.

Remmy: Yeah, she clings to Jack and says, “Help me, help!” and just — 

Bea: They're helpless.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: And that’s the thing that Jack is trying to avoid so hard so far this season. He doesn't want to be helpless, he wants to be able to fix things, and here he is with someone that — I mean, he grows attached quite quickly, but he still has become attached to this person and made promises about their well-being. Then to see them take an action to try and help and it causes harm instead... it's just devastating.

Remmy: Yeah, an absolute slap to the face. And a reinforcement of everything that he has been struggling against for the past month.

Bea: Yes.

Remmy: Yep, yep. And we go back to the forest.

Bea: Yep, we're cutting back and forth here. Jody has received — Jody pauses because she's getting a phone call coming in and it's got Claire's name on it. She just boops the Do Not Disturb on right now. She doesn't want to take that call because that's opening a can of worms that she can just not deal with right now. She admits that Claire has a right to know about what they just discovered, that there is the Kaia doppelgänger, out there but she doesn't.

Remmy: But again, she's so fearful because she knows that — she says that when it comes — the first mention of Kaia and Claire is “a powder keg.”

Bea: Yes.

Remmy: She knows that this we'll have some...

Bea: It will have such a destabilizing effect on Claire, and that's the thing that Jody's trying to find for her girls. She's trying to find stability and balance to their lives.

Remmy: Yeah, and Sam's kind of nodding along like, “Yeah, that's tough,” and Jody says, “First love strikes quick.”

Bea: Slaps my leg and sticks my leggy out real far — I'm just like, Dreamhunter!

Remmy: [laughs] Dreamhunter yeah, yeah.

Bea: Canon confirmation of the subtextual reading that we got of last season’s Kaia and Claire interactions.

Remmy: Yeah, yes. And it's, again, Wayward feels abound. This episode, this whole episode, is so jam-packed with these juicy little Wayward morsels and it just feels like Bobo — it's almost a f*** you because — 

Bea: Well, Bobo's giving us an epilogue to The Season That Never Was, y’know?

Remmy: That's a good way of putting it.

Bea: We never got the Wayward Sisters series, but he is giving us some closure to those storylines.

Remmy: That is — that's, yes, exactly. I was going to say, like — 

Bea: [laughs] Two middle fingers up?

Remmy: Two middle fingers up! Like, this is what you could have had motherf*****s but...

Bea: Ugh. That I wish we still had, because — I mean, sidebar, but when were thinking about season 15 coming forward and we're thinking about the possible endings for it, just even having Wayward Sisters out there as a spin-off series put so much more optimism on the likely outcome of season 15. Because if a spin-off is out there then, I mean — to go to the more behind-the-scenes matter of it, but that becomes an opportunity to have cameos for existing characters. If Jared and Jensen and Misha and Ruthie and Alex and blah blah blah, they have a place where they can pop in from time to time as guest stars and still give the characters — still give the audience the taste of those characters.

Remmy: We have _got_ to have an entire special topic episode about Wayward and where the Supernatural universe is going from season 15 and beyond. We've kind of touched on it before. I don't think — I wouldn’t be surprised if Wayward was even picked up this year in the wake of the announcement of season 15.

Bea: I would love — yeah, if we're not careful _this_ episode is going to become the Wayward episode, but they've got to be fools for not picking it up. There's a built-in audience. There's so much intrigue. You have the world already established, you have the characters already established. Tell me who I need to talk to and shake that petition at again, like, here's the names of a shitload of fans who are like, “Remember Wayward? Because we f****** do!”

Remmy: Supernatural built the CW Network. Yes, I will say it. Not Jane the Virgin, not — 

Bea: Supernatural preceded the f****** CW! It's the only show from the WB that was The Little Engine That Could. It survived this takeover, it survived Hiatus, [the] writers strike of 2008. It survived all of these things. You[‘ve] even heard the head of CW being like, “The only way that we would cancel [Supernatural] is if the ratings f****** tanked. Other than that, they have as many seasons as they want,” and — 

Remmy: Right.

Bea: You have the cash cow! Milk it!

Remmy: Yeah, milk that cash cow! This is the one time that I will ever say that for any franchise, but yes.

Bea: Wayward, Wayward, Wayward. Tell me how many times I have to say it.

Remmy: Supernatural will not die with season 15.

Bea: It will if they're stupid.

Remmy: No way.

Bea: You would have to be actively stupid is what — you'd have to be like, “That's a smart move. Okay, let's do the opposite of that.” That's about the only way that you would fumble with the built-in community, the built-in fandom, that comes with the show.

Remmy: Like I said, a whole special topic episode! We could go on and on, I'm so...

Bea: Deep breathing.

Remmy: I'm so ready for it. I mean, they even had five years ago — again, guys, listeners, our lovely listeners — tune in because it will come eventually.

Bea: We'll have a whole f****** Salt Round on that one.

Remmy: [laughs] They even had a failed spin-off like five years ago and if you were thinking about it five years ago — holy shit. _Seven_ years ago. — and if you were thinking about it seven years ago, then you’ve got to be getting on that now.

Bea: Okay, I'm cutting this off. We[‘ve] got to go back.

Remmy: Yes [laughs] yes.

Bea: So.

Remmy: So we're back at the bunker with — 

Bea: Nono, so Jody and Sam just finished talking about Claire, and then Jody takes this opportunity to ask about Dean, y’know, what's going on there. Sam gets somebody now that he can talk [to], says, “I don't know, but Dean's working through something alone. He's not ready for what we're doing,” and Jody does the, “Maybe he needs it.” I didn't bring this up earlier, but there are parallels that we are seeing between Dean and Jack. As early as this episode this season, we are seeing Dean as someone who needs to throw himself into action, and he feels perhaps powerless. He feels like he hasn't been useful to his family, and so he needs something physical, concrete, that he can put his hands on and get work done, and Jack — who has also been struggling with this feeling of being useless, of not being able to bring anything to the table — he has been begging for permission to become involved and he's being turned away. They're both so similar in instinct.

Remmy: Yeah, and in episode 1 — episode 2, episode 3 we saw Jack turned away from the action — but in episode 1 Sam repeated that same sentiment that Jody has put forth, that maybe he needs it, and that's exactly what Sam did by including Jack on that first — 

Bea: Yep, that Motown Meats — 

Remmy: — the Motown Meats field trip [laughs]

Bea: Yeah, so I liked seeing the parallels between that. Jack needs this, Dean needs this.

Remmy: And here, even in this episode, Jack needs a win. Which is why it's so devastating to see we have Laura failed — where we have failed Laura.

Bea: Yeah. Jack was willing to go outside the bunker and stake his claim in trying to find his own win, and then he comes across the infirmary and makes the decision to stay there instead. But even here, on his home territory, things aren't going well.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: So after the scene that ends with Sam and Jody, we cut to Kaia. She's broken into a cabin that's in these woods, and she finds drink and food and is basically just replenishing herself to go onto the next bit. When she exits out the door, Dean has hidden himself and he knocks her out clean. Jody and Sam see this happen, and they're a bit taken aback that Dean took that brutal step of just knocking her unconscious with a hit to the face.

Remmy: There's a coldness in it. So far we've seen determination, but this is the first moment where we see action...

Bea: A ruthless action, yeah.

Remmy: Yeah, ruthlessness. That's the word.

Bea: So this goes to Kaia being tied up in a chair and being set down for interrogation. We get insight into the fact that this is not their Kaia, but the Kaia that came from the Bad Place, and I liked — you notice that Dean mentions almost a throwaway line, “Oh so like Bad Cas or the new Bobby,” so [at] some point since the last season, season 13, Cas has brought to Dean and probably Sam’s attention that he came across his alternate universe self and — 

Remmy: Oh my god. Oh my God. _Oh my God_ — 

Bea: — took him out.

Remmy: Oh my god _pause_ ,oh my god wait [wails] Wait!

Bea: It was such a throwaway line but — there it is again, Bobo! Bobo, you carry so much.

Remmy: Bobo!

Bea: So many implications in all the lines that you do. Like, I love you, but my god.

Remmy: _Wait!_

Bea: I sat down at the table and my plate is just so full right now. I have so many morsels to pick through.

Remmy: Oh my God no — I didn't even — oh my god, my back hurts, I can't even — 

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: What have you done to me?? My — 

Bea: The implications have thrown out your back.

Remmy: I am spiraling, okay? So I obviously, as you may have been able to tell, I did not even consider that until this throwaway line we have had no acknowledgement between Cas and the Winchesters that he actually had that confrontation with his alternate self. I mean, he was — Cas was the only person who actually interacted with his alternate self. We didn't even know that — the Winchesters would have no way of knowing that Bad Cas was a thing unless Cas talked about it, and hey, I just need like 16 codas on this. Oh my god.

Bea: And I'm going to introduce another thought to you, that it was the alternate universe Charlie who also interacted with the alternate universe Cas, and so there is the possibility that this Charlie, in some passing conversation, brought up, y’know, “Oh, that guy? It's so weird seeing him around, because I knew him —”

Remmy: “It's so weird.” That's a mild way of putting it.

Bea: Well — I don't want to be like, “Hey, it's so _traumatizing_ to see this guy just standing over there,” but. So that could have been the way that this information was brought up to them, and then that would be a bit of a shocker and introduce a new conversation that Dean or Sam would want to have with Cas like, “Hey. So yeah, you did a stabby at your alternate self...”

Remmy: No one saw him do the stabby. He decided — he executive-decision decided to do the stabby.

Bea: Again, it's just one f****** line, but you just mention Bad Cas and my ears are standing at attention, like, oh f***. There’s so many thoughts — [there’s] math equations appearing in front of my face. When was this knowledge imparted? What did it mean? What was that conversation like?

Remmy: I didn't even have that thought and I'm like [wails]

Bea: That's why I wrote it down. I was like _Remmy needs to know because I know Remmy will freak out. Remmy will want to know this_.

Remmy: I didn't know! I didn't know, and who — I wonder, did Cas tell both of them, or did Cas just tell Dean? And then maybe Sam in that moment is just like, “What the f*** are you talking about?” Oh, we're going to be revisiting this later. Oh my god.

Bea: And it's like, did they visit it with seriousness? Did Cas try to just pass it off as a no big deal type thing? All of these questions.

Remmy: Augh!

Bea: There's so many ways that it could have gone about.

Remmy: My heart.

Bea: Again, I love, love, love the way the narrative trusts you enough to throw it out there. If you don't catch it then whatever, but if you _do_ you can play through it on your own terms and decide what it means.

Remmy: Yes, yes, yes. I mean, I complain — I just love to complain about too much exposition or heavy-handed writing or — 

Bea: Or overstuffed.

Remmy: Yeah, but then s*** like this happens and I'm totally oblivious.

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: I missed the nuance.

Bea: Okay, let's backup — we've taken this train cart and we're going back on the rails. So we get information from Dark Kaia saying that, “What I was to her, she was to me,” and you'll never understand it, but also that she never meant to kill Kaia. She had meant to kill Claire.

Remmy: Which, of course, hits really hard. Jody loses some sympathy.

Bea: Yeah, and what was that motivation? Was she aware that our Kaia had feelings for Claire and was like, “Nope, we got to conceal, don't feel.” Nip that s*** in the bud and just take that out? Why was Claire a threat to her?

Remmy: Ooh, that is — that — yeah, because I actually did have that thought in the moment, I just didn't examine it. Why did she want to kill Claire?

Bea: And I'm sure that if we had a Wayward Sisters TV series that this would be a running story.

Remmy: Explored, mhmm.

Bea: What was going on there, like maybe — because I sit there and I'm like, okay, so our Kaia is dead so that romance definitely died. But if the reason why the other Kaia killed her was because she didn't want to catch feelings, but then she does anyways — I'm like, “It's so dark and it's so dramatic and it's so romantic!” I don't know, there’s a teen giddiness about it inside me about where that storyline could have gone.

Remmy: Give it to us!

Bea: Mhmm! But this Dark Kaia is refusing to give more answers. She just says that Dean — Dean/Michael — she doesn't say it explicitly, but he's the reason why she's on the run.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: And she goes right for the f****** solar plexus. She says that Dean is weaker. She knows that — nah, you're not Michael. You're the weak version of him.

Remmy: Well, we got to think — it's just like you said, in the moment at the camp, she saw Dean but she doesn't know the difference. I mean, she could have just been trying to — she went in swinging because it could have been Michael. She was just attacked by Michael, but now she knows after that fight — after this chase through the woods. She taunts Dean with this. “I approached you as Michael, but I see now that you are not him. You are weaker than him and I'm not afraid of you.”

Bea: Yes, and she knows there is this weak point within Dean that she — this vulnerable place that she can just apply pressure to by saying, “You're just like him, you're just a weaker version of him,” and we will see that in the upcoming scene where this plays out. But if we're going on a scene-by-scene basis still, then we're getting sort of a quick rapidfire cut back-and-forth between the bunker and Dean and Kaia, essentially, confronting each other.

Remmy: Yeah, because we cut back to the bunker here with Jack crying over Laura's corpse.

Bea: Yeah, Cas is covering her body with a blanket — well, sheet.

Remmy: Yeah, and Jack says, “We let her die,” which — augh, that hit me, like — that's just mean, c’mon.

Bea: Well, he — we're told from the get-go that he is approaching this a bit like a fairytale, and now it's not following the script. It just hurts for him to think, “If I had my powers I could have done something. This wouldn't have happened,” and just laying accountability on himself and he really shouldn't. So the Winchester Way, basically.

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah, and we see that from Dean later too.

Bea: So poor Laura is dead, Jack is apologizing, and we enter into this back-and-forth of scenes between the cabin where Kaia is being held and Jack going through a revelation. Just for simplicity's sake, let's follow Jack’s storyline first and then we'll go back to Dean.

Remmy: Yeah, agreed.

Bea: So Jack is looking at Laura, and he's just not satisfied with the thought that this is where it's over. He has almost a moment of illumination [while] he's thinking, and so he wants to know where the witch’s body is. They go to the autopsy room, they pull her out, and he's saying that the bullet is still inside of her. Whatever magic she was using, it's not a metaphor — she is using those girls to keep her young. So if that magic is trying to revive her, then it's no wonder that Laura is dying at a really quick rate / dead already.

Remmy: Right, because the magic is trying to keep this witch from dying except she's basically already dead. And apparently there's a f****** morgue in the bunker?

Bea: [laughs] I’m not complaining — and the morgue is in the infirmary. Again, not complaining.

Remmy: [laughs] Not complaining, it's just — we're learning something new everyday.

Bea: Yeah! And I feel like is this the first time we have seen this infirmary, too?

Remmy: Yeah, it is I think it is.

Bea: Yeah, I love it.

Remmy: No, it's great.

Bea: Anyways. So.

Remmy: So we pull out the drawer on this morgue — we fridged this corpse of the witch because apparently we brought it along?

Bea: Like, ten feet away from Laura.

Remmy: Yeah, apparently we brought it home with us to the bunker instead of burning it, or?

Bea: Well, I think it's kind of smart, because if this witch was living — okay. Laura left her one-stoplight town and she was trying to find something else. If she was willing to stay with this witch, then this witch must have been offering things along the life that she wanted. So I'm thinking that this was an urban area, yada yada yada, so if they killed this witch and then burned the body in the backyard, you know that the neighbors are calling the cops, so...

Remmy: So I mean, well — damn that's a good — that's a good thought, man. I was [laughs]

Bea: I'm like, it's a clever f****** move because, again, what do they do with all the f****** bodies that they cause each week? Do they just leave it there, [and] Crime Scene Mama is going to come and investigate this s***? But for Jules to just be like, “We're going to pack this b**** up in the trunk, we're taking her home, and we're going to cremate her where nobody's going to worry about it.” [It’s] small worldbuilding details that I'm — juicy, juicy, juicy tidbits.

Remmy: [laughs] And I'm so glad that you're here to reveal them.

Bea: Yeah, too many thinky-thoughts about what the director was probably like, “Ehh, let's just put them in the same room.”

Remmy: Right, because we need them — we needed the witch — me, I'm just like, “Okay, we needed the witch’s body there, so we're just going to cut some corners,” but you're the expert in twisting it into making sense.

Bea: Yeah. Don't worry, guys, I got the narrative for you.

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah, f****** — it's f****** great [laughs]

Bea: But yes, so Jack pulls this piece of jewelry off the witch that — 

Remmy: Wait, wait, wait.

Bea: — six year-old me is f****** salivating over it, like, it's such a gaudy costume jewelry, I love it.

Remmy: [laughs] No, wait, let me, let me — 

Bea: No, I'm on this, I'm fixated.

Remmy: Let me, let me — so Jack pulls out the _drawer_ in the _morgue_ in the _infirmary_ in the _bunker_ that we have never seen before, and this woman — 

Bea: She's _glowing_.

Remmy: She has this piece of jewelry on identical to the one that Laura indicated earlier, that this amulet — it's an _amulet_. It's a $6 piece of costume jewelry that looks tacky — 

Bea: — And I love it.

Remmy: — that looks tacky as s*** — 

Bea: I love it so much. Give me the costume jewelry. Again, child-brain me is just glowing like it’s Christmas morning, I'm like [high pitched] “It's so f****** good!”

Remmy: [laughs] And so this amulet on this witch’s chest is glowing — 

Bea: No, it's radiant. It's a beautiful cut. It's a 16-carat emerald.

Remmy: — this big green glowing amulet — green amulet, like, “Nah. That checks out.”

Bea: “Seems normal.”

Remmy: “Nothing suspicious here.”

Bea: “Yeah, that's fine.” Again, their lives are so weird that it doesn't even ping on their radar.

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: They're not good at pattern-matching, okay? They're like, “Laura has one. The witch has one. That's normal.”

Remmy: [laughing] I know!

Bea: “We've seen two of them. That's got to be normal.”

Remmy: I'm just like — I loved Jack Sherlock Holmes-ing this out, except it's this _big, glowing gem_ on a dead witch’s chest.

Bea: [laughing]

Remmy: Like, “Oh, no.”

Bea: “Maybe there's something to this.”

Remmy: Yeah. “Maybe there's something there.”

Bea: Yeah, I remember the first time watching this being like, “No s***.”

Remmy: [laughing] That's exactly — 

Bea: The glowy emerald that she's wearing, like Laura's wearing, you didn't have any questions about that? You weren't like, “Okay, you're a teen, and that's what you want to be wearing? Okay, okay.”

Remmy: Uh-huh.

Bea: But then, I guess it's Cas and Jack and Jules, so I’m like, “Jules, we were really relying on you to be calling on this woman's fashion sense.”

Remmy: [laughing]

Bea: Okay, okay. So Jack basically resolves this by grabbing the costume jewelry and going smashy with a hammer. The glow escapes the jewel and goes back to Laura, and Laura does a whole gasp-revive thing, and Cas looks so f****** proud of Jack he just — 

Remmy: Jack saves the day!

Bea: Yeah, and augh — his heart just swells.

Remmy: And we didn't even — we haven't even talked about how Cas, y’know, you say he looked at Jack with pride in his eyes, but also this whole scene has been framed in Jack's perspective, of how Jack feels about failing this girl. But you know Cas feels that s*** just as deeply.

Bea: And [sighs] I'm sorry for tacking onto the two-hour timeline here, but it's going to the Winchesters’ relationship with death, where we can’t accept it, we have to change it. And so Jack's instincts is that we can't let this lie, we have to — we have a solution, we just haven't seen it yet, and he hunts until he finds it and reverses death.

Remmy: Yeah, we have that moment of crushing defeat but we’re — [deep sigh] We have to fight against the dying of that light.

Bea: Yep.

Remmy: Always, always, always. The Winchester Way.

Bea: Yep, and so this moment of pride from Cas towards Jack culminates this little bit of storyline, and we can switch back to where Dean and Kaia are essentially confronting each other. Jody wants to take Kaia someplace safe, because they just covered the fact that Kaia is on the run from Michael's monsters so who knows how long they can stay in this one place before some other s*** goes down, but Dean is not about it.

Remmy: Yeah, he says, “No, we have to settle this here and now. We have to break her.”

Bea: Yes, he says, “Break her,” and that takes both Sam and Jody by surprise, because it speaks of this level of severity. Jody brings it up, “Are you willing to torture for this information?” and Dean _is_.

Remmy: Yeah, Dean, this is — again, that ruthlessness. We've veered from determination into ruthlessness, and it's starting to go a step too far.

Bea: Yeah, and this Kaia lampshades the fact that Dean has done this before. “No, this isn't coming from Michael, this is you in your core, because whenever you have not gotten your way with Kaia, you[‘ve] put a gun in her face.”

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: I do like that we brought that back, because I remember in season 13 when Dean did that — when he threatened Kaia with the gun in her face — I felt like that was such an overreach of his anger at that moment.

Remmy: It was. It was shocking. We talked at length about that scene at the time, and it was such a hard scene to watch.

Bea: Yes, that he would go to any length to save a family member. He threatened Kaia at that time because Mary was in danger, and he needed Kaia in order to find her. If we were just left that action in season 13 and have that left hanging, it's nowhere near as satisfying as bringing that element around again and having the victim almost — it's not our Kaia, but it's a Kaia who knew of it and knew what Kaia’s feelings were about it — stating to a main character that wasn't okay. You did it because you were scared, and this is what you do. You're no different than Michael; you use threats and violence to get what you want, and saying that Dean is just like Michael is the thing that seems to really set Dean off.

Remmy: Yeah, but in this moment it sets Dean off because he sees the truth in it.

Bea: Yes, he doesn't want that to be true, and when she mentions that, “I saw what you did to Kaia, that gun in her face,” Dean physically steps back from this. He can feel the guilt, he knows that what he did at that time, he didn't feel good about it.

Remmy: But that doesn't stop him in this moment, no.

Bea: No, and we get a sense from this next scene that Kaia doesn't mean this with any ruthlessness or callousness, because she says that Dean — his anger and his impatience — it all comes from fear. Michael has hurt both of them, and this is the first moment that we have explicitly stated that Dean has been hurt by Michael, because up to this point Dean has been avoiding this fact.

Remmy: Performing.

Bea: Yes. Again, he's trying to bundle up what happened to him regarding Michael and treat it like something that is just in his past and it doesn't affect him.

Remmy: Yeah, but Kaia calls him out on it and pulls up all that fear and hurt by saying, “I know who you are, and I actually relate to it. Not only do I know who you are, but I know why you are how you are, and I know what you're thinking in this moment, and I know what you want.”

Bea: Yeah, and Dark Kaia is an embodiment of trauma here. She was from the Bad Place. She spent her whole life on the defensive, protecting herself from their threats, having to weaponize herself. There's a lot of trauma and damage [in her] backstory, and now that she's in conflict with Dean, she is the trauma of himself that won't go away. It's being brought up again to the surface, and as much as Dean wants to ignore it, here are facts being thrown at him that he is not okay.

Remmy: Yeah, and when Kaia says, “He hurt the both of us. Michael hurt the both of us,” we kind of segue into the Kaia and Michael flashback, on the actual confrontation between Kaia and Michael.

Bea: Yes, we are shown what happened between Michael and Kaia. Michael, without his coat but with his paperboy cap, came to her with a deal, which is essentially, “I know that you don't belong in this world either. You bleed this same different energy that I do, and that weapon of yours? I want it. And you can either join me and give it, or I'll kill you and take it.”

Remmy: And fighting — ”If you fight, you die.”

Bea: Yep, and she's like, “Okay, fight.”

Remmy: Yes, yes, yes. So she attacks Michael rather than submit to Michael.

Bea: And even though he is barehanded, he is kept — he is being treated as a threat and keeping pace with her feints, her jabs. He's parrying all of these things, and she's still like The Aesthetic™ in these fights.

Remmy: [laughs] Hey, Michael had a little bit of that too with his little posing!

Bea: Yeah, yeah. His little step back — with his leggy sticking back.

Remmy: It was a dance.

Bea: Yes. He was ready with his side of the blows, and he didn't expect that when she got knocked down that she would take him down too. So she kicks the legs out from him, and she does a good stabby into his arm, and he goes, “Owie owie owie!” and flees like a little b****.

Remmy: [laughs] Exactly.

Bea: So yeah, the conversation was going on long enough inside of the cabin that Sam is like, “We should go,” and Jody's like, “Uh oh, we got visitors.” When she looks out the window, there are — I thought they were wolves, but no, it's just because of the prosthetics — these three vampires that have shown up, and guess who's coming for dinner.

Remmy: Those f****** prosthetics, they’re — as I was thinking about the prosthetics a little bit more, I was like, well, before I think we were just doing CGI teeth, but here we have actual prosthetic teeth and they're worse. They're bad. It’s not good, lads. It's not a good scene.

Bea: You know there was some ADR taking place, because that poor actor would have such difficulty delivering clean lines.

Remmy: [retching noise] Yeah.

Bea: [muffled, indeterminate] — buffet.

Remmy: [laughs] Yes. So we have the three vampires burst into the building and immediately attack Jody, Sam, and Dean, and Dean shoots one of the vampires and [the vampire] shakes it off and gives a smug little smile and says, “Those spiked bullets don't work on us anymore,” and by spiked we’re like dead man's blood, but — well, I was going to say, why would Dean even have had specifically dead man's blood bullets in his Colt, but I'll give it to them since they did stumble across the vampire heads.

Bea: Yeah, I think those heads plus the time that they've spent in the fictitious forest has led to them probably taking a break and taking stock of which weapons they should have out, because when this fight breaks out, machetes are coming out a-flying. Furniture is getting broken and everyone is getting their faces wailed on.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: Yeah. Dean has out his gun but the vampire’s holding his arm down, but Dean is like, “Oh, I'm going to line up this perfect shot,” and shoots Kaia's chair — the leg of it, and Kaia's like, “Oh, suddenly my arms are free.”

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah.

Bea: I am frustrated with this moment, but I will accept it.

Remmy: No, I had the exact same thought.

Bea: She's like, “The ropes came loose when — you shot the wood and then the rope just let me go!” The rope was so scared it uncoiled, and Dean just look so proud about the fact that Kaia is loose and you're going to get your ass kicked. [But] Kaia just — whoop whoop whoop — smashes through the window, she's gone, and Dean's face is just like, “Well, that wasn't a foreseen outcome.”

Remmy: Yeah, right? Dean, you were the one who just tied her to a chair and threatened to torture her. This is a house full of enemies. There are six people in this room and none of them are friends. Why would you ever expect anything different than what happened?

Bea: Why wouldn't she later-days?

Remmy: I know!

Bea: But yeah, so fighting, fighting, fighting. Jody's arm gets broken. A [vampire] grabs a machete ready to go, but then — boom — Kaia is in and she stabs his face right through the head, and then she goes _Will It Blend?_ on the other two, and they will! Their heads are gone.

Remmy: That little helicopter twirl of the spear.

Bea: Yes, she's so extra.

Remmy: So extra! I literally have in my notes, _Kaia and spear. So extra_. That's my only [laughs]

Bea: And I love how she just stood there with her arm out, the end the spear behind her and she's just like, “Yeah, b****, this one's mine. This is an extension of my body you are not f****** taking this.”

Remmy: Uh-huh.

Bea: And then Jody is like, “You didn't have to save us,” and Kaia is just (mouth directly against the microphone), “I didn't. I was just killing the monsters.”

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: “Because if I didn't, if I just ran, you guys would get your asses kicked. They would have come after me, and I just bought myself some more time. So don't flatter yourselves,” basically.

Remmy: “I got them out while they're distracted by the three idiots in the room who couldn't hold their own in this fight.”

Bea: Yeah, and Kaia and Dean have a stare-down. Dean, you can see, is just making grabby-eyes at the spear. If Kaia just sat there and wiggled it around, Dean would be like a cat with a laser. His whole attention was on it, and yet he is refraining from going and grabbing it like he wants to. There's just this unspoken tension that’s going on between Kaia and Dean right now. Dean doesn't want to prove her right by saying he's just like Michael, so he is doing the thing that he doesn't want to do, which is let Kaia leave with it. But he allows it and is disappointed by the fact that he had to.

Remmy: Well, that's just the thing, though. He didn't have to. He wasn't forced to.

Bea: But to prove to himself that he wasn't as ruthless as Michael, then that was the choice he had to make. In order to differentiate himself from Michael.

Remmy: Or — absolutely, absolutely — he could have made a move and had Sam restrain him, but I love that he chose to restrain himself.

Bea: Yes, yes. And then they walked back to the car, and they must be deep enough in this fictitious forest that it's dark again when they get there. Poor Jody's arm has been broken this whole time, and I just feel so bad for her.

Remmy: That snap when Jody's arm broke was just [cringing noises]

Bea: [cringing noises] Jody refuses Dean's attempt to apologize. She doesn't even let a breath get out there before she's like, “Nope, don't,” and she's such a badass that she doesn't need a ride to the hospital, she's like, “Nah, I've done this before. I can do it.”

Remmy: Yeah. Sam offers to drive her to the hospital. She says, “Oh, nah, this isn't my first time driving with a broken arm.”

Bea: Mhmm. She's more nervous about getting to the hospital and Alex finding out that this has happened, and then she definitely has to let Claire know. “Oh yeah, I got my arm broken by some vampires while I was trying to get information from Kaia's doppelganger.” Claire will be like, “And you didn't answer my calls while you were out there??”

Remmy: And Jody has broken that compact that she has with Claire, that humans are my area, but she says, “I promised to let Claire in on anything monstery,” and Jody says, “I'm not looking forward to facing the —”

Bea: Yeah, the consequences of what has happened here.

Remmy: Yes.

Bea: And also that Jody is shaken by seeing Kaia again, and it just brings up her fears for the girls that are in her care. Alex, Patience, and Claire could be taken from her at any moment, and she's trying so hard to give them room to lead their own lives, but it's such an instinct within her to hold them close and protect them.

Remmy: And she only knew Kaia for a short while but she feels like she's already lost one of her girls, and it just brings to the forefront of her mind that fear that she could lose another.

Bea: Yeah, and she says it just feels like an uphill battle for her, that she's lost before she's begun, because all of these things are stacked against the future that she dreams for. Her kids are going to be in danger, and there's nothing she can do to bring that danger to zero. It feels like it can only ever go up.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: So yeah, poor Jody. Jody feels.

Remmy: Well, I think that, again, you want to look at this as a Wayward epilogue. It's just so — it's a lot, but it's good. It really is just so much insight on every character within this ‘verse.

Bea: Yeah, because — if it feels like this episode was long, dear listeners, it's because this episode is also saying goodbye to the potential spin-off. We have not only an episode of Supernatural here, but we have the “final episode” of Wayward Sisters happening at the same time.

Remmy: Yeah, I totally agree. We definitely have to dedicate time to these Wayward storylines.

Bea: Yeah, and congrats to Bobo for doing this double duty. You had 40-odd minutes of television time to get across all of these things, and you just had Jody as the character on-screen and yet the presence — I shouldn't say just Jody, Jody and Kaia on-screen — but you felt Claire, you felt Patience, you felt Alex just in the storytelling.

Remmy: Yeah, it really was just very rich storytelling. Yes.

Bea: So after this scene, we get Jack. He’s back in his room and he's looking pretty pleased with himself, and he sits up when Cas has knocked on the door. Cas has come to tell him that Laura is going back home to her mom, so again, we're getting a little implicit idea of, y’know, “Jack, you should stay home with your family too,” being reinforced. But Cas wants to apologize to Jack, because they're all going through a lot but Cas still feels like he hasn't dedicated sufficient time to Jack and what Jack, in particular, is going through. He should be there for Jack, he says.

Remmy: And I just want to take a moment to mirror this scene to the first episode of this season, where we had a very similar scene with Sam and Jack, where Sam felt that he hadn’t had the time to dedicate attention to Jack. I don't know, I just think that this Cas and Jack relationship, where Cas is maybe feeling that he's not doing the best he can do by Jack — if we compare it to the Sam scene from the very first episode of this season, it's almost like Cas is selling himself short. I think he's being too hard on himself.

Bea: Oh, definitely. Cas sets a really high bar for himself to meet, and I think it is an instinctive part of Cas to just assume that he's falling short.

Remmy: Yeah, and I don't think that he is.

Bea: Whatever he's doing isn't enough. I think again, if there is a dad Olympics going on right now, then in this sprint Cas is out f****** ahead, and Sam is lagging behind, and Dean just realized that the gunshot went off so he's started puffing along the track. But Cas has forgotten that, y’know, you're doing a good job. You are being a parent to this kid, and the fact that you care so much does have meaning. That doesn't mean that you're getting A+ across the board, but it does mean that your attention does not go unnoticed. And I love, love, love that Cas is saying [to Jack] that, “Skills can take some time to pick up, but you show you have the nature of a hunter, and you have the heart and the mindset that's needed for this.”

Remmy: And he says — I'm stealing this line from you — and he says to Jack that, “You made me so proud today.” My heart just melts.

Bea: He's just beaming as he says it, too. Cas is always so earnest when he is speaking with people he cares about, and I just love seeing him — because it's such a human thing to do, and you forget that this is Celestial Intent that is engaging now on such human levels.

Remmy: It — Cas comes into this very self-depreciating, but all we see is a good boy [laughs]

Bea: Yeah, he's a good egg and he's doing his best, and I'm really glad — I love him for it.

Remmy: I love him for it, yeah.

Bea: And yeah, Cas says that he'll speak to Sam and Dean, that he'll try and get a hunt where it's just him and Jack that are working on it, like, “Jack, I'm going to get you out there. I am in your corner, we are going to get you on cases. Do not worry, you are not going to be sidelined.”

Remmy: And Jack, eager puppy, he's all for it. He's like, “That would be great, yeah.”

Bea: I wrote, _he's so happy he starts coughing_.

Remmy: [laughs] He's so happy he starts coughing, and Cas asks if he's okay, but Jack totally blows it off. He says, “I'm human now,” and the way that he said it, it was so...

Bea: It was like a badge of honor.

Remmy: Yeah, yeah! He's like, “I'm human now. Must be getting my first cold.”

Bea: Yeah, “NBD, I'm human,” and then Cas says that he'll go make him soup. Cas is going to go make him chicken soup! I'm like, Cas, do you know how to do it right now, or are you just going to go Google and do your best? Like, baby! Again, storyline. Tell me, tell me.

Remmy: Tell me, tell me [laughs] Yeah, I know. Oh my god, he's so — he just makes such an effort.

Bea: Yes. He doesn't even realize that he's in exemplary-parent mode.

Remmy: [laughs] Especially by Winchester standards.

Bea: Yes, it's like, “Oh, so you didn't dump your kids out forest and make them do wilderness training impromptu? What's wrong with you?”

Remmy: [laughs] And we go back to — so we've had our Cas and Jack wrap-up.

Bea: Yes, and now we go to our Sam and Dean wrap-up. We're back in the Impala, and this time Dean is more willing to talk. Dean says, “I put us in danger today, and it was stupid danger,” and [that] Sam was right. [Dean] didn't want to look at what Michael did to him, he just wanted to skip to the end. Basically, he didn't want to do the work of recovery, he just wanted the conclusion of killing Michael.

Remmy: “Get the weapon, slay the monster. I want to be done with it and it didn't work out like that, and now I have to confront the fact that I don't have a guns-blazing, action-oriented path set out ahead of me.”

Bea: Yeah. “I have to accept that it's not so easy. I can't just go to the library, grab the candlestick, and kill Colonel Mustard. There is more to this that I'm going to have to work through, and unfortunately I don't want to but I got to.”

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: And then [Dean] can't even really make himself say why he said yes to Michael, he just summarizes it with with a quick, “It's stupid,” so he's still beating himself up and holding himself to blame for everything that Michael has done with Dean as his vessel.

Remmy: He says that, it's literally — ”It's all on me. Everything that Michael has done, the army of monsters, and all those murders, and all the destruction, it's all on me.” And me, of course, I'm just like, “Oh, no. No, Dean.”

Bea: That's too much responsibility to take.

Remmy: Yeah, it's very typical Dean, but it's just all — so we see Dean here not able to separate his body from his responsibilities. I mean, what I'm saying is just because Michael used him as a vessel does not mean that he, Dean, is responsible for Michael’s actions. If Dean hadn't said yes, then Michael could have found another vessel.

Bea: Oh yeah, Michael _would_ have found another vessel.

Remmy: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Bea: Yeah, Dean can't see that Michael's decisions are separate from Dean's decisions. He considers them one in the same.

Remmy: Yeah, yes.

Bea: And Dean now finally fesses up to Sam that it wasn't a blink.

Remmy: Yes. The last thing he needs to get off of his chest.

Bea: Yes. He let Sam think that it was such a short time period for him, but in reality he was experiencing every second of it. He says, “Every second of being possessed by Michael,” and it's not a — I don't know what you could say is a normal possession, but he felt like he was drowning the entire time. He was being held below the surface and having to fight every moment to try and regain his breath.

Remmy: Yeah, and I don't know — we've had some insight on to possession. We had Jimmy Novak, who said it's like hanging on to a shooting star.

Bea: Yeah, you're chained to a comment — comment? — to a _comet_.

Remmy: And we saw Sam possessed by both Lucifer and Gadreel, but I don't know. I think that from what we know of possession, we can only assume that Michael deliberately put Dean in this place of suffering.

Bea: Yes, he created a torturous environment with the intention of breaking Dean’s spirit.

Remmy: Yeah, yeah, and Dean fought it every second of every day, and felt it every second of every day. But he was never strong enough, and Dean feels that to be a failing on his part.

Bea: Yes, and not to open a whole new can of worms, but I go back to thinking about Dean between season 3 and season 4. He had those thirty years in Hell before he broke, and what it would have been like to go through that each and every day and to have the strength to turn away. Just imagine if he was trapped in this scenario for longer, what it would have meant to him to give up fighting against this drowning sensation.

Remmy: [cringes] Yeah, I mean, I don't know. We do know that he didn't reach that breaking moment.

Bea: Yeah, but I'm just wondering if it was a phantom in his memory, thinking like, “I've given up before, and I can't do that again.”

Remmy: Oh yeah, yeah.

Bea: Yeah, just the vision of being almost drowned and to have that continue in perpetuity.

Remmy: It was a very provocative image. And we actually have our broment. Dean has finally opened up, and Sam finally maybe is approaching understanding — an understanding that he definitely didn't have before.

Bea: Yes, because Dean wouldn't let him have it.

Remmy: Yeah, I'm kind of in the corner that Sam should be a bit more sensitive but [laughs]

Bea: They've had such a history where keeping secrets doesn't get them anywhere, and they've at least build some trust where, “Okay, you said that. I'm going to try and give you every — I'm going to give you trust at face value, but I can also sense that something's wrong. You aren't acting like yourself, and so I just want you to have a place where you can unburden this.”

Remmy: Yes.

Bea: So yeah, it was a nice thing to see Dean acknowledge it wasn't just easy-peasy. “I can't just bounce back from being possessed by Michael. There is a trauma there that needs to be acknowledged in order to move past it.”

Remmy: Yeah, he — and it wasn't even like — my first instinct was to say he's finally dropping the facade, but it was [only] partly performative. Mainly, it was that gogogo that we've been seeing all episode, and now that it has finally been stripped away, he has to confront the truth of what he's feeling. Again, let's just assume it's been a full three days and two nights, and this has just been a very, very long 72 hours.

Bea: Yeah, this has been a helluva roller coaster for the characters.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: Yeah. I think Dean had to sort of peel back the armor and let Sam have a peek inside whether he wanted to or not. And then the very last scene that we have is poor Jack.

Remmy: Poor Jack. We're ending on another _dun dun dunn_.

Bea: Yes, Jack is coughing, this time with blood into a tissue, and it's one of many in his trash bin. He's looking a little pensive like, “Well, that's not normal.”

Remmy: Yeah, I'm like, “Jack, doctors exist dude!” Like, if I was newly human and I started coughing up blood, I would be a little concerned. Have you had your TB shot? Your vaccinations? What's up?

Bea: Yeah, and it's gotta be that he's thinking, “If I bring this to attention, then I'm getting benched for good.”

Remmy: What is his thinking? It just baffles me, I mean...

Bea: I think it's gotta be, “They're going to worry and I'm a Nephilim. I'm a Nephil; there's not going to be something that you can look up in a book that tells you what's wrong with me.” I think he's just genuinely like, “Okay, that's not a good, and if I bring this knowledge to any of my dads then I'm getting benched for good, and that is the last thing that I want to have happened.”

Remmy: Yeah, but again, this is like — where is your self-preservation, man?

Bea: Yeah, I don't know. It's probably one of those things like, “Oh, I can just tough it out,” or, “If my grace regenerates right away then problem solved.” I can see a naivety and optimism that he might think this is just temporary.

Remmy: I mean, I was just like — dude, if I had been invulnerable all my life and then I find — I suddenly found myself human, you better f****** believe that I would be going to my mommy every time I burned a finger. Like, “Is this normal?”

Bea: “I'm getting a list of all the vaccinations that I am eligible for and I[‘m] getting that schedule marked out in my f****** Google calendars.”

Remmy: And that's — and _scene_.

Bea: Yeah, we end on Chekhov's tissue. 

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: So, Remmy, what was your favorite part of this episode. What was your takeaway?

Remmy: Oh, I can't [laughs] I don't think I can.

Bea: There's so much. It’s such a dense, rich episode.

Remmy: It really was, there was a lot here — oh man. Oof.

Bea: Yeah. I think the thing that I really liked about it was just the implicit epilogue to Wayward. Like I’ve said, time and time again, I really liked that we were given a bit of closure with what happened there, and this nod to the storylines that could have been.

Remmy: I totally agree. I would — that was what really popped out here with Jody, really. Like you said, Jody was the one who had to carry the weight, or had to act as the conduit for every Wayward character in this episode. We got insight on everyone through Jody and she did it, she delivered it, and it was done really well. Like you said, it was also very implicit.

Bea: There was. It was very minimalist but it was also very compact.

Remmy: Yeah, and comprehensive.

Bea: Yes, yes.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: But yeah, that was season 14 episode 3, “The Scar.” Holy crap, if you guys made it to this end [then] thank you for sticking with us.

Remmy: [laughs] Uh-huh. if you made it this far then woof, but we hope you enjoyed it. Seriously, we hope you enjoyed it half as much as we did.

Bea: Yeah, and — I mean, it's a Bobo episode. Mark on your calendar when the next one's coming because you know we're going to have a lot to say about it too. This guy gives us a lot to chew on, and we're just a dog with a bone we can't let go of [laughs]

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: And if you guys have the same level of feelings that we do, or if you have thoughts that you want to share with us, then please by all means reach out to us. You can go by email; we have nochickflickpodcast@gmail.com, and we also are on social media.

Remmy: Yep, you can reach us at Tumblr at nochickflickpodcast, or Twitter @nochickflickpod. And if you did enjoy this episode then please do download, subscribe...

Bea: Give us a rating if you're interested.

Remmy: Yeah, we see every single one of your comments and downloads and we — 

Bea: We approach them with enthusiasm.

Remmy: To put it mildly, yes, for sure. And we will see you next week when we cover season 14 episode 4, “Mint Condition.”

Bea: Thank you guys and see you then!

Remmy: Thank you, bye!

Bea: Bye!

[stinger]

Remmy: This episode was “Oops, All Berries”.

Bea: Oops, all berries?

Remmy: Yeah, Captain Crunch. Y’know — 

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: — the Captain Crunch cereal, “Oops, All Berries”?

Bea: No, I don't know this.

Remmy: Oh my god.

Bea: That's a thing?

Remmy: People of the Land of the Free will know what I'm talking about, okay, Bea? [laughs]

Bea: Oh, so you got [a] sugar cereal, so now you're bragging about it.

Remmy: Yeah, yeah. Do you not have sugar cereals? Is it all maple honeycrisp up there?

Bea: Tell me please, what is cereal, dear American. I mean, I know sugar cereals, I'm not — I don't live in that much of the boonies!

Remmy: [laughs]


End file.
